If there was one thing to be taken from the Lakers’ Opening Night showing against the Mavericks in Los Angeles on Tuesday, it was that it is obvious what the early-season narrative is going to be with this team, one that was harped on by the crew in the TNT studio, one that was a focus of analyst Reggie Miller and one that came up well before the season got underway—the Lakers are instituting, at least partially, a new offense based on Pete Carrill’s ball-movement Princeton offense. And no one seems to like it much.

The first result was not encouraging. The injury-depleted Mavericks, who were without Dirk Nowitzki and Chris Kaman, outworked the Lakers and left the home crowd stunned by handing L.A. a 99-91 defeat. Dallas

Dallas never really lost control of this one, leading at halftime and for all of the second half. This counts as an inauspicious beginning for a team that brought in a tidal wave of talent in the offseason, getting Steve Nash in a sign-and-trade in early July, and doubling down by trading for Dwight Howard a month later. Throw those two into a lineup that already includes stars Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol, and, well, we knew we’d be set up for another Laker-centric season in the NBA.

But it will be a while before this team hits its stride, and until it does, it will be the contortions of the Princeton offense that takes the blame. That has been evident every time they’ve taken the floor. Before Tuesday’s uninspiring showing, the Lakers were 0-8 in the preseason, averaging 85.9 points on 41.8 percent shooting, with a mind-numbing 18.6 turnovers per game. Those are not the kinds of numbers that signify a functional offense, let alone a good one.

It all started, of course, when the team brought in one of the NBA’s top proponents of the Princeton offense, assistant coach Eddie Jordan, this summer. The hiring was an acknowledgement of one of the biggest gripes about the style of head coach Mike Brown’s offense, which is to say it lacks style altogether—Brown’s sets are notoriously vanilla, going back to his days in Cleveland, when the offense was even more predictable than it was in his debut go-round with the Lakers last year.

In the preseason, noted skeptic and ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy said the Lakers would turn to more standard offense based on the skillsets of their stars. “I think they're going to combine the Princeton offense with the Santa Clara offense (Nash’s alma mater) with the Lower Merion (Bryant’s high school) offense,” Van Gundy said. “Mike Brown is a very, very good basketball coach. He's not going to run the Princeton offense at the expense of not putting Steve Nash in as many pick and rolls as he can because when you combine Nash's incredible shooting with being just an incredibly unselfish and accurate passer, you would be doing your team a disservice.”

Maybe so. But the notion of going into the season with a mish-mash of offenses based on the talents of their four disparate star players—Nash’s pick-and-roll and fast-break ability, the ball-dominating perimeter greatness of Bryant, the ball-dominating interior strength of Howard, the high-post elegance of Gasol—without finding a way to get those talents to click together sounds like a disservice, too. Using aspects of the Princeton offense to get the Lakers stars to play off how the defense sets up is the best approach that Brown can take going into this year.

It is only October, after all, and Brown didn’t have a healthy starting five for most of training camp. It should come as no surprise that the offense looks so disjointed—it is not a system that comes naturally to any of the players involved, except maybe Gasol. But these are smart, experienced players and they’ll get it in time. To think Brown should give up on adding some creativity to the Lakers attack is premature.

That’s not going to stop the critics. Never mind that the Lakers missed 19 free-throws on Tuesday, or that they were just 3-for-13 from the 3-point line. And forget the defense which, arguably, has been worse than the offense—L.A. yielded 99 points to a Dallas team missing its top scoring option, let the Mavs shoot 47.1 percent from the field, saw Howard foul out in the final two minutes and allowed 42 points in the paint to a team using a power forward-center rotation of Elton Brand and Brandan Wright backed by Eddy Curry, who was scraped off waivers from the Spurs last week.

That helps explain why the Lakers are where they are at the moment. The Princeton offense will be in the criticism crosshairs for what are sure to be an up-and-down first few months of the year. Brown would be wise to ignore it.